Arts of Citizenship promotes and supports public scholarship that simultaneously advances faculty and graduate student careers in the arts and humanities, and the vital agendas of arts and cultural community organizations.

Program Description and Goals

Arts of Citizenship assists graduate students and faculty in the arts and humanities in building meaningful and sustainable connections with partners in cultural and arts institutions, schools, government and community groups. The result is an ever-growing spectrum of publicly engaged, collaborative projects that produce new scholarship, strengthen partnerships and drive change in our neighboring communities. Our goals are to support collaborations by:

  • Providing resources and training opportunities to increase the depth and impact of graduate student and faculty engagement in public scholarship
  • Promoting the creation and dissemination of public goods and scholarly knowledge, and
  • Providing career development for graduate students and faculty interested in public scholarship.

Faculty-Graduate Student Collaborations in Public Scholarship

Collaborative teams consisting of the faculty fellow, graduate student researcher, and community partner will be awarded grants of $5,000-$20,000 to develop and implement a project in public scholarship. Successful proposals will demonstrate how the project will both provide substantial benefit for the community partner and advance the scholarly work of the graduate student researcher and the faculty fellow.

Graduate Student Fellowships in Public Scholarship

Graduate students who have achieved candidacy are eligible to receive grants of up to $7500 to support the development, in conjunction with a community partner, of a project in public scholarship. Successful proposals will demonstrate how the project will advance the graduate student fellow’s scholarly research and provide substantial benefit for the community partner.

For each of these programs, graduate students and faculty should submit a 2 – 3 page letter of intent describing the proposed project and the research or creative work that will be produced. Letters of intent should include a response to the following questions:

  • What is the scholarly question that motivates the project, and what will be your scholarly contribution when the project is complete?
  • What is the community benefit from the project, and what will be the contribution to the community partner’s agenda?

Questions? Please e-mail Elizabeth Werbe at ewerbe@umich.edu.